WebDesign provides many features to help work with your entire site and keep documents organized. This section discusses these features and describes what they can do for you. To learn more about them it is important to try them out within WebDesign. Open the Site Manager and FTP Client to see all the features that they offer.
WebDesign's built in Site Manager allows you to easily keep track of your entire web site folder. Simply open the Site Manager (Window->Site Manager...) and click the select folder button. The dialog that appears provides three options;
From within the Site Manager you can open files by double clicking them, create new files, create new folders or delete files using the toolbar buttons.
You can re-organize your web site from within the Site Manager using drag and drop to move or copy files to and from different sub folders. To copy a file hold option as you drag the files to a destination folder.
You can also update all the includes in your entire web site by clicking the 'Update Includes Button' in the Site Manager's tool bar.
WebDesign's Site Manager allows you to upload all your web site files to your FTP server. WebDesign will keep track of the last time your web site was updated and only upload the files that have been modified after this date. This will allow you to save time and bandwidth.
If your upload stalls or an error occurs while uploading, you can reconnect to your ftp server and upload the rest of the files. If you receive a repeated error, wait a few minutes before re-uploading.
To upload your modified documents click the 'Upload Web Site Files' (third button from the left) and select your FTP Server from the dialog box that appears. While your files are being uploaded you will be unable to access the Site Manager but you can continue to edit your documents.
WebDesign provides full support for creating and maintaining web sites. You can create a new web site from within WebDesign or import and existing site developed in anther authoring application.
Creating a New Web SiteTo create a new web site you must do the following;
WebDesign allows you to either open a previously created web site made with WebDesign or import a web site folder. To open a previously created web site you can do the following;
If you have created a web site in a different application or downloaded it from your server, you can import your web site folder by doing the following;
You can easily see the last time your web site was uploaded by looking at the lower right hand corner of the site manager window. WebDesign will update the uploaded date and time after saving your web site to your server. When importing a web site the updated date and time will be set to the modification date of the root directory. You can override this option by selecting the 'Reset Updated Date' when importing your web site.
You can upload and download web pages using WebDesign's FTP Client. Simply use the Open from FTP option or the Save to FTP option under the File menu to use the FTP Client. This gives you direct access to all of your documents on your FTP server without relying on any third party applications. Furthermore, when working with a file located on an FTP server, WebDesign will automatically upload the file again when saving. This removes the need to constantly open the FTP client as well makes editing remote documents much easier and quicker.
If you work with multiple FTP servers, or you don't want to re-enter your login information each time, WebDesign can store your login information for you so that you only need to enter it once. Select 'Edit List' from the Bookmarks popup menu in the upper left corner of the FTP client to add your server information.
You can upload files or folders to your FTP server using drag and drop from WebDesign's Site Manager or from the Finder.
If you do not have an FTP server see the 'Getting your web site online' section located in 'Chapter 8 - Web Site Tips'
If you find a web site that you would like to base your web site on or simply learn from example, WebDesign can download a web page directly of the web. Select 'Open From URL' under the file menu and entire the URL of the web page you want to download. The web page will be downloaded and opened in a new window in WebDesign.
You can not resave the downloaded page to the URL that you downloaded it from. This feature simply downloads the code from another site allowing you to use it in you own web pages.